Brad Cleveland is an author, public speaker, and consultant who focuses on customer experience, call centers / contact centers, [1] technical support centers, social media, and other customer-facing environments. [2] [3] [4] He was one of two initial partners in ICMI (International Customer Management Institute), [5] joining founder Gordon F. MacPherson, Jr. in 1991. [6] Cleveland was a majority shareholder and served as president and CEO of ICMI from 1996 through June 2008 when ICMI became part of London-based United Business Media. He is author/editor of eight books, including Contact Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in the New Era of Customer Experience, which is used in universities and corporate training programs around the world. In 2021, he authored Leading the Customer Experience: How to Chart a Course and Deliver Outstanding Results.
During Cleveland's time as CEO, ICMI expanded its international presence, launched industry membership, developed a management level certification program, rolled out the ACCE and Demo conferences, and expanded its publishing and research division. [7] He has appeared in media [8] ranging from The New York Times [9] to The Washington Post [10] ', The Wall Street Journal, Nerd Wallet [11] ' and NPR's All Things Considered. [12]
In 1997 Cleveland performed a Tedx Talk entitled "Thriving In An Always-On World" about disconnecting from technology. [13]
Leading the Customer Experience, was selected as a NYC Big Book Award distinguished favorite. [14]
Brad lives in Sun Valley, Idaho [link], with his wife Kirsten. They have a grown daughter, Grace. Brad has an office in San Diego, California.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.
A call centre or call center is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone. An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product or service support or information inquiries from consumers. Outbound call centres are usually operated for sales purposes such as telemarketing, for solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt collection, market research, emergency notifications, and urgent/critical needs blood banks. A contact centre is a further extension of call centres telephony based capabilities, administers centralised handling of individual communications, including letters, faxes, live support software, social media, instant message, and email.
In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer is the recipient of a good, service, product, or an idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or an exchange for money or some other valuable consideration.
Technical support, also known as tech support, is a call centre type customer service provided by companies to advise and assist registered users with issues concerning their technical products. Traditionally done on the phone, technical support can now be conducted online or through chat. At present, most large and mid-size companies have outsourced their tech support operations. Many companies provide discussion boards for users of their products to interact; such forums allow companies to reduce their support costs without losing the benefit of customer feedback.
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company through phone, online chat, mail, and e-mail to those who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but towards the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that of increasing revenues. The perception of success of the customer service interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer". Customer service is often practiced in a way that reflects the strategies and values of a firm. Good quality customer service is usually measured through customer retention.
NICE Ltd. is an Israeli technology company specializing in customer relations management software, artificial intelligence, and digital and workforce engagement management. The company serves various industries, such as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, outsourcers, retail, media, travel, service providers, and utilities.
Speech analytics is the process of analyzing recorded calls to gather customer information to improve communication and future interaction. The process is primarily used by customer contact centers to extract information buried in client interactions with an enterprise. Although speech analytics includes elements of automatic speech recognition, it is known for analyzing the topic being discussed, which is weighed against the emotional character of the speech and the amount and locations of speech versus non-speech during the interaction. Speech analytics in contact centers can be used to mine recorded customer interactions to surface the intelligence essential for building effective cost containment and customer service strategies. The technology can pinpoint cost drivers, trend analysis, identify strengths and weaknesses with processes and products, and help understand how the marketplace perceives offerings.
Frederick F. Reichheld is an American New York Times best-selling author, speaker and business strategist. He is best known for his research and writing on the loyalty business model and loyalty marketing. He is the creator of the Net Promoter System of management (NPS).
Virtual queue is a concept used in both inbound call centers and other businesses to improve wait times for users. Call centers use an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) to distribute incoming calls to specific resources (agents) in the center. ACDs hold queued calls in First In, First Out order until agents become available. Virtual queue systems allow callers to receive callbacks instead of waiting in an ACD queue.
Customer experience, sometimes abbreviated to CX, is the totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral customer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages.
Qualtrics is an American experience management company, with co-headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah, in the United States. The company was founded in 2002 by Scott M. Smith, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith, and Stuart Orgill.
SparkBase, LLC was a stored-value and gift card transaction processor located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States from 2004 to 2016. It provided private-label, stored-value, specialty gift cards, customer loyalty, and community rewards programs to Independent Sales Organizations. ISOs then sold these gift and loyalty products to merchant customers along with credit card services and processing equipment.
Medallia is an American customer and employee experience management company based in San Francisco, California.
Fuze is a cloud communications and collaboration software platform designed for the enterprise. Fuze was acquired by 8x8. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
MessagEase is an input method and virtual keyboard for touchscreen devices. It relies on a new entry system designed by Saied B. Nesbat, formatted as a 3x3 matrix keypad where users may press or swipe up, down, left, right, or diagonally to access all keys and symbols. It is a keyboard that was designed for devices like cell phones, mimicking the early cell phones' limited number of 12 keys.
Operations management for services has the functional responsibility for producing the services of an organization and providing them directly to its customers. It specifically deals with decisions required by operations managers for simultaneous production and consumption of an intangible product. These decisions concern the process, people, information and the system that produces and delivers the service. It differs from operations management in general, since the processes of service organizations differ from those of manufacturing organizations.
Samsung Experience was the name of the software overlay by Samsung for its Galaxy devices running Android 7.x “Nougat” and Android 8.x “Oreo”. It was introduced in late 2016 on a beta build based on Android 7.0 “Nougat” for the Galaxy S7, succeeding TouchWiz. It has been succeeded in 2018 by One UI based on Android 9 “Pie” and later versions.
Soren Marcus Kaplan is an author, consultant, and speaker on the subject of innovation and innovation culture in organizations. He is an Affiliate at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, founder of the consulting firm InnovationPoint, co-founder of the software company Praxie.com, and is a columnist for the Innovate column of Inc. Magazine.
vcash was a Malaysian digital wallet and online payment platform established in Shah Alam in November 2017, by Digi Telecommunications, a subsidiary of Telenor Group. vcash allowed users to make payments in local stores via a QR code, pay bills, top-up prepaid mobile phones, and do P2P transfers. Despite being a Digi product, user registration and usage of this service was opened to both Digi and non-Digi customers. Its competitors were GrabPay, Touch 'n Go eWallet, and Axiata's Boost. On 1 November 2019, Digi announced they were discontinuing vcash on 30 November 2019, two years after its launch, which were attributed to stiff competition from competitors that provide rewards to their users to retain customers in their services.
First Call Resolution or First Contact Resolution (FCR) is a metric that measures a call center's performance for resolving customer interactions on the first call or contact, eliminating the need for follow-up contacts. FCR is one of the most-watched metrics and considered the most important call center industry metric. Ideally, the FCR definition means no repeat calls or contacts are required from the initial call or contact reason from a customer perspective.